SCOPE

Open Source software (OSS) is gaining momentum. The largest IT and software companies all around the world are now investing in it: IBM has recently released Eclipse under an OSS license, Sun Microsystems has acquired MySQL and has released Solaris as OSS, Oracle has acquired BerkeleyDB. At the same time, more and more companies are building their business according to the Open Source paradigm. Many OSS projects are currently run and maintained by companies, even though indirectly. For example, more than 90% of OpenOffice code is developed by professional software engineers employed by a pool of companies that include Sun, IBM, Novell, Red Flag, Red Hat, and Google. Most of the code of MySQL is developed by MySQL’s employees. Recent research has shown that even among managed and active projects hosted on SourceForge more than 40% of the code is contributed by paid developers.

Based on this empirical evidence, why should companies invest in OSS? The focus of contributions should be on the ways in which business can be built around OSS, with a particular attention to the role of communities. Submissions are invited for theoretical and empirical research papers. The official language of the workshop is English.

The workshop is open to all researchers and members of the OSS community. The Organizing Committee will select the participants through a double blind review process. At least one author of each accepted submission must attend the workshop and all workshop participants must pay the workshop registration fee.

TOPICS

The following represents a non exhaustive list of topics:

OSS business models: OSS strategies of software companies, sustainability of OSS-based business models, hybridization between commercial and open software, impact of OSS on firm performance.

Companies in OSS projects: Companies’ involvement in OSS projects: contributions and strategies, role of paid developers and social networks, impact of companies’ involvement on software quality.

Communities: Advantages of OSS communities for OSS-based business models, communities as market platforms and source of feedback, managerial strategies for leveraging OSS communities.

OSS model and communities in other sectors: Applicability of OSS-like models to other sectors (biotech, multimedia, etc.), role played by communities in other sectors.

Authors should submit papers (in .sxw, .doc, .rtf, or .pdf format) to Eugenio Capra (eugenio.capra@polimi.it). Papers ahould be formatted in accordance with the main conference templates, which can be found at: http://oss2008.dti.unimi.it/index.php?id=authorKit.htm